Fintech News Issue #179
August 16th, 2018

People are still wondering if fintech is just a hype. Now they've examined 6 key sectors to answer this mystical question. Chris Skinner wonders if we need a blockchain and why you should or should not be planning like a banker. Also: Conference season is in full swing. Five top events in UK, the U.S. and Germany featured in this newsletter issue

I haven’t written about blockchain for a while. I guess it’s because I got bored of it. I’m not bored of the promise of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. Just bored of how much hype there has been and of so many companies claiming to have the latest blockchain breakthrough.

The role of innovation and transformation tops the list of industry buzzwords today. The fear of disruption and obsolescence is driving a host of strategies and tactics that are intended to "reinvent" something that is new and competitive.

When PayPal emerged in the late 90s, it changed the game for small businesses in the United States. Individual contractors, Mom and Pop stores, and side hustlers would no longer have to fear being unable to accept credit cards for online transactions or wait weeks for a paper check to arrive.

A new report has shown that investment rates in the global FinTech scene have hit record levels in the first half of 2018, as financial institutions look to tackle complex problems with the leveraging of innovative new technologies. Britain represents a leading global presence in the market, surpassing the value of investment in US FinTech by almost $2 billion.

As banks and credit unions around the world retool their branch experience for the digital age, many are pouring more tech into their brick-and-mortar environments. But such digital investments might do little more than simply delay their eventual obsolescence.

In June, the Insight Vault published a post titled Guess Who Holds The Most Blockchain Patents? To save you the trouble of a click, the answer is Bank of America. The advice to mid-size banks and credit unions was not to go out and pursue their own blockchain-related patent applications but to understand what the BofA patents means to their IT strategies and plans.

The future of banking will put a premium on data analysis and cognitive technologies – areas in which the tech titans are making ever-deeper inroads. Can banks and credit unions see the bigger picture, or will they continue to "add a few bots" on top of traditional technology?

Tokenised utilities leverage blockchain networks and decentralised applications so as to offer services built using the capabilities of these networks. In order to interact with such services, users must use cryptographic tokens that represent certain rights of access to the network.